Is it Corbyn or the mainstream media who’s “lost the plot”?

Tomorrow’s Daily Mail predictably attacks Jeremy Corbyn for having “lost the plot”, choosing to print a photograph of the Labour leader gardening on his allotment as the storm clouds gathered and seven of his rebellious MPs broke away to form an “Independent Group”.

Their assumption seems to be that it was somehow weird or arrogant for Corbyn to be on his allotment at such a time.

I wonder whether voters will see it that way? They don’t share the obsessions of political journalists and part of Corbyn’s success at the 2017 election was because (despite his ‘extremist’ policies) many Britons saw him as a normal bloke – his allotment and Arsenal allegiances were part of that.

If most voters were concerned about Corbyn’s previous associations with Sinn Fein, or his links with alleged ‘antisemites’, then they would have ditched the Labour Party long ago.

The Jewish Chronicle has long attacked Corbyn for ‘antisemitism’: most voters don’t care

Sadly for Fleet St, and sadly for many H&D readers, most Labour voters are probably more concerned about the effects of Tory austerity cuts than they are about terrorism in Northern Ireland, arguments about Zionism and ‘antisemitism’, or even Britain’s membership of the EU.

That’s why when in 2017 Theresa May offered them the opportunity to elect a House of Commons committed to securing Brexit, the voters instead returned the present hung parliament.

Doubtless the latest split will do some electoral damage to Labour, but a great deal might depend on whether the Tories also split, and especially on whether really heavyweight Tories can be persuaded to join the breakaway.

Latest rumours are that a gang of four female Tory MPs are most likely to defect: Anna Soubry (who has already removed references to the Conservative Party from her Twitter biography), Dr Sarah Wollaston, former cabinet minister Justine Greening, and Heidi Allen.

Perhaps a bigger prize would be Sir Alan Duncan, who is still in Theresa May’s government as a Foreign Office Minister of State responsible for Europe and the Americas. Whereas some of the defectors are pretty much in the ‘wet’ Tory Reform Group (TRG) tradition, Alan Duncan was closely associated with William Hague and in his student days was a leading figure in the so-called ‘Magdalen machine’, the main ‘right-wing’ rival to TRG inside the Oxford University Conservative Association.

In this respect Sir Alan would make an unusual ally for the solidly pro-Zionist Labour faction who have created the ‘Independent Group’. However it’s possible these hardcore Zionists might welcome him for this very reason, as it would help to deflect suspicions that the whole business is a Mossad plot to prevent a Corbyn premiership!